No Fee for Minors and/or Individuals Using Sporting Facilities

In the wake of the stabbing death of footballer Chris Rodriguez by the caretaker of the Norman Broaster Stadium in San Ignacio, the National Sports Council of Belize has issued a memo on fees for use of sporting facilities countrywide. There had been outrage on social media platforms claiming that Rodriguez was killed for not wanting to pay a fifteen-dollar fee to use the training facilities. Director of the National Sports Council Ian Cal today clarified that no charges were to be imposed on the individual footballer and spoke of the new rules going forward for teams as well.

Ian Cal

Ian Cal, Director, National Sports Council

“The fees are something that has been implemented ever since, has been here since the last administration and prior to them it was there as well. Why? The National Sports Council is a statutory body, we are an arm of the government; we receive a yearly subvention and then we are in charge to raise our own funds for us to be able to sustain the facilities. I want to clarify; I want to make extremely clear that there is no fee for young people to enter our facilities or any individual per say to use our facilities. If a child wants to come in and run at Marion Jones, they are free to do so.  Every day you see a number of kids playing here at Marion Jones, cycling, track. These people use the facilities free of cost. No fee countrywide for any individual person or a group of young people to play or use our facilities. What there is a fee for is for training facilities, where teams go to train – national teams, bigger teams go to train and prepare for competition. And in this case that is a fee of fifteen dollars per team – not per member, per team per hour. And why there is a fee as I mentioned before, the entire team pays fifteen hours because they want to book their hour. There is a number of teams that want to use the facility so it has to be controlled.”

With immediate effect, teams are to continue booking for practice, teams will also be allowed to practice for free of cost during the day and teams requesting practice time at night will be allowed two hours free light usage. The national sports council has inherited a number of new facilities as the N.S.C. now has representation countrywide.